In emergency medical situations, it is desirable to immediately apply first aid techniques to an injured person, and to transport the injured person as soon as practical to a health care facility such as a hospital, trauma center, or the like. Numerous studies have shown that the faster an injured person is transported to a care facility, the greater the chance of survival and the greater the chance that the injuries can be minimized, eliminating permanent damage to the injured person. In this regard, numerous advances have occurred in the industry in order to accelerate the transportation of an injured person to a care facility. These techniques have focused on rapid transportation of emergency personnel to the site of the injured person, and rapid transportation of the injured person from the site.
Techniques for transporting the injured person from the cite to a care facility include the extensive use of helicopters to airlift an injured person, thus reducing the travel time required to reach the health care facility. Helicopter transportation techniques have been used in both mountainous terrain in which transporting an injured person may take an extended period of time during travel over rough terrain, and transportation from vehicle crash cites located on freeways or city streets where transportation may be effected by ambulance or conventional vehicles.
There are many areas which are generally inaccessible to standard vehicles and require the use of specialized equipment in order to extract an injured person and transport the injured person to a care facility. These areas typically include the sides of mountains which require the use of repelling ropes in order to extract climbers who have become injured, or hillsides which may require the use of specially tracked vehicles in order to safely negotiate the hillside and transport an injured person.
A variety of tracked vehicles are used in many countries to extract the injured person of accidents from snow covered hillsides, such as ski resorts. One of the difficulties in employing tracked vehicles is the considerable expense of purchasing and maintaining a tracked vehicle and the number of vehicles which may be required in order to provide sufficient transportation capabilities to remove an injured person from a hillside and subsequently transport them to a care facility.
In order to alleviate this problem, a variety of rescue toboggans have been employed at ski resorts. Rescue toboggans are relatively inexpensive, are easily transported on a regular ski lift, and are highly mobile as they can be maneuvered by a ski patrol or ski rescuer to the site of the injured person. This same mobility allows a ski patrol or ski rescuer to readily extract or injured person from a hillside or mountain side. Frequently, injuries occur in areas which may be inaccessible when a tracked vehicle is employed, but may be accessible to a ski patrol or ski rescuer employing a rescue toboggan.
Rescue toboggans are typically constructed of a light weight material such as fiberglass and have tie downs so that an injured person can be placed in the toboggan, strapped in place and transported off the hill or mountain where they can be placed in a vehicle or helicopter and transported to an emergency care facility. The toboggans employed are typically extremely useful for certain types of injuries, such as ankle sprains, broken arms, shoulder separations, minor leg brakes, and the like, where the injured person can be readily moved into and out of the rescue toboggan without the risk of extensive additional injury. Typically, rescue toboggans are designed to have a width slightly greater than the width of the injured person which they may be transporting and a length slightly longer than the length of the injured person they may be transporting.
Once the injured person has been loaded into a rescue toboggan and encountered a sufficient risk of additional injury by being placed in a rescue toboggan, it will become necessary to extract the injured person from the rescue toboggan and place the injured person on a stretcher, backboard, or apparatus for transportation to an emergency facility. This transportation may be accomplished by ground vehicles, such as an ambulance or by helicopter, depending on the needs of the injured person and the time required to transport the injured person to an emergency facility.
In a variety of conditions, especially as more severe injuries are incurred, the available rescue toboggans become difficult to use without risking additional, and possibly more extensive injury to the injured person. This is especially true for spinal or neck injuries where a minimum amount of movement of the injured person is preferred in order to avoid aggravating or stressing a particular injured area.
Additional difficulties are encountered if it is necessary for more than one individual to ride in a rescue toboggan at one time. This situation may occur in the case of cardiac or respiratory arrest or with other chest injuries in which there is a significant risk that an injured person may stop breathing, or the injured person, heart may stop beating. In these situations, the typical approach has been to lash or fasten two rescue toboggans together, possibly at right angles to each other, and have a rescuer crouched or kneeling along side the injured person to monitor the status of the injured person or provide cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and/or to ventilate the injured person.
A need therefore exists for a rescue toboggan which can accommodate both an injured person and a rescuer. A need further exists for a rescue toboggan which is designed such that the injured person does not need to be disturbed while being extracted from the rescue toboggan.